I need to recover the contents of an OST file from Outlook 2003. I don't need to do this so badly that I'm willing to pay the hundreds of dollars some companies charge for recovery utilities; I'm more interested in doing this from the intellectual challenge side of things. Are there any recommended libraries for doing this? I'd prefer something in either C# or Java.
A:
Maybe you could check Alioth LibPST. If you know C, you can probably go through the source code and make it do whatever you would like to do.
Hosam Aly
2009-01-21 21:37:30
I'll check that but it sounds like it's for reading PST files and my belief is that OST files have a different format.
Otis
2009-01-21 21:57:22
I thought at one point OST and PST were the same. Are they different now?
tyndall
2009-01-21 23:54:25
If they are, I may just be able to use libs on our MSDN discs at the office.
Otis
2009-01-22 01:53:50
+1
A:
There is good tool for recover software-recover outlook 2003 ost,as far as i know program is free,it is a reliable and efficient application, it will save many hours of your work and help your users to restore critical data,save your mails, contacts and tasks, when Microsoft Exchange Server is inaccessible or out of order,can recover ost to pst file and save your time and money,recovering ost files will help you not to lose contacts of your partners, when Microsoft Exchange Server is out of order, all your message history will be also restored,will help you to understand, whether this tool can help you and save all critical data from your mailbox.
Well, as my question said, the contents aren't as important to me as the intellectual exercise.
Otis
2009-01-28 23:35:40
+2
A:
Rename the .ost extension to .pst and run scanpst.exe in your Office installation directory. For versions prior to Outlook 2007 this will convert your OST to a PST.
I remember this trick oh so long ago. Yeah, too bad it doesn't work for 2007 now.
eduncan911
2009-10-28 17:51:02
A:
I ran into the same problem. There seems to be a bunch of commercial tools, but I was only able to find one open source tool libpst. The (limited) documentation only talks about .pst files, but it worked like a charm on both .pst and .ost files for me (Outlook 2003, I believe).
I had a few issues compiling it. It couldn't seem to find the Python::Boost lib, but the following worked:
./configure --without-boost-python --disable-python && make
No need to rename the .ost file or convert it with scanpst.exe. Something like readpst -M outlook.ost will dump all your emails into files under the current dir.
A:
If you want the utility do this job best, I think it's Advanced Exchange Recovery. It recover ost and covert ost to pst. If you are only interested in the way how it does, down the free Demo.
Jim Chou
2010-10-18 05:35:07